More tests up on Web site "Chinese XML Now!"

[Rick Jelliffe]

 Just to say I have put up more XML test files on
http://www.ascc.net/xml/test/index.htm

Now we have
    * 11 simple test files
    * 4 versions of each: plain, +CSS, +xmlns, +DOCTYPE
    * each version served  in 3 encodings
    * each encoding served in 3 MIME types
= 396 different tests.

The test files are not designed to all be viewable with IE 5.0 or
Gecko/Mozilla. But it is interesting to see what their level of support
is.

IE 5.0 beta is quite happy with the +CSS files, and  (apparantly this
depends on what other things you have loaded, I cannot figure it out)
will on some systems display XML with a nice default stylesheet.
(However, IE 5 beta seems to have position-dependent encoding PIs and
stylesheet PI, so I removed "standalone" from the former and "charset"
from the latter.)

For the Big5 and GB2312 encodings, IE 5beta is great. (Of course, you
need the Asian handling installed, but it is just a download away. ) IE
5 does the correct thing if it cannot understand an encoding: it refuses
the file. Gecko, for example, does not seem to use ISO 10646 at all: it
looks like its stuck in 8859-1: the current version doesnt seem to even
look. Nasty.

But there are lots of strange things: when we put a string that looks
like a numeric character reference inside a plain file
http://www.ascc.net/xml/test/wf/big5/application_xml/zh-big5-7.xml
it is OK. But the same file using a stylesheet interprets the CDATA
string as if it were an NCR:
http://www.ascc.net/xml/test/wfss/big5/application_xml/zh-big5-7.xml

Rather unexpected behaviour. It is interesting that IE5 beta treats an
incoming XML file the same whether it is plain/text, text/xml or
application/xml, when you are browsing it.  It is very determined to
interpret the file as XML if it has an XML encoding PI.  Gecko seems to
use the MIME registry much more: I think I prefer that.

The other thing to keep in mind if you are using any of the test files
with Chinese characters (many dont) is that if the font that your
browser is using a font without those characters you may see just a
white box or something.

Rick Jelliffe
ricko at gate.sinica.edu.tw



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